Tangled Web by Gail Z. Martin

Author:Gail Z. Martin [Martin, Gail Z.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-939704-70-2
Publisher: SOL Publishing

Chapter Ten

The day after our near-fatal encounter with the haunted looms at the Edwards mill was blissfully normal. Plenty of traffic at Trifles and Folly meant we had little time to dwell on our brush with danger, and the day passed smoothly enough for us to take a mental break from the ongoing weirdness and catch our breath. No new cursed objects, no rabidly angry customers.

So the knock at the door while I fixed dinner caught me by surprise. With the wardings, only a short list of trusted friends can come all the way up on the porch without being escorted, so that cut the number of possible callers down to a select few, none of whom I was expecting. My surprise heightened when I saw Anthony.

“May I come in?” he asked, looking like he felt very self-conscious turning up on my doorstep.

“Of course,” I answered, stepping to the side to let him in. “Is something wrong? Is Teag okay?”

Anthony walked inside, hung up his jacket, and dropped onto my couch. I saw the fine lines around his eyes from worry and sleeplessness. “Teag’s not hurt,” he said, leaning forward onto his thighs and clasping his hands in front of him. “He’s at his lesson with Mrs. Teller. But he’s not okay.”

“Bad dreams?” I hazarded a guess.

Anthony nodded. “At first, I figured it went with the kinds of things you see with what you do. I only know a fraction of it all, and what I’ve seen is enough to cause nightmares. But there’s something really wrong, and I don’t know what to do.”

I sat across from Anthony. “Tell me what’s going on.”

Anthony sat straight and leaned back against the couch, then closed his eyes. “The dreams changed about three weeks ago. Before that, I’d have said they were normal, considering. I mean, once in a while, Teag would have a nightmare, and when I’d wake him up, he’d tell me that it had to do with some creature you’d fought off. Except that in his dreams, everything went wrong, people got hurt, and the good guys didn’t win.”

I shrugged, knowing those kinds of dreams too well myself. “Yeah. I know what that’s like. Can’t say that those are ‘normal,’ but they’re regular nightmares.” Recurring, traumatic, and terrifying, but still nothing supernatural.

“The new dreams are coming more often, and it’s harder to wake him out of them,” Anthony confided. “Like they don’t want to let go of him. When he’s dreaming, he’s really in the dream. His whole body thrashes, he kicks and fights—nearly gave me a black eye more than once—and he cries out.”

Anthony opened his eyes and met my gaze. “Something’s hurting him, Cassidy. I see welts appear on his body after a dream that weren’t there when we went to bed the night before. I’ve heard him scream, and seen bruises form, with no one touching him. No one that I could see.”

“What else does he say about the dreams, when he wakes up?” I asked.

“He says he doesn’t remember them,” Anthony replied.

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